Elias investigates: December 2007

Hej,

Life at home is great fun. I truly enjoy and rejoice the reunion of the family. Right now we are at our wonderful home. Everyone, my father Pekka and mother Margareta, my brothers Isak and Titus and, the older brothers wife Jonna and, most important, for girls who fancy me, me, Elias.

We have celebrated a traditional Christmas. The preparations started on 22 with cleaning and other choirs, we also cut our Christmas tree from a secret place. On 23 my mother prepared traditional Christmas food and continued the next day. I did some useful things as well. I cleaned the toilets with new gained skills from Kelvinhaugh Street. That is speed. The weather was very disappointing. It is rainy and windy and there is no snow. Temperatures are around 5. This is a serious backlash.

On 26 we walked to a lake nearby and I tried "Långfärdsskrinning" which is ice-skating in the nature. It includes skating on very thin ice and occasional swimming in cold water when the ice breaks. It was exciting. We survived dry but the other skates had a swim. It is always scary to get wet so they were scared as well.

Christmas Eve is the most important day of Christmas. I woke up around 11 and woke up my brother. It is most amusing to make up new ways of un-gentle ways of waking up. We had a breakfast and I biked to Masaby for buying some milk and bread. The way wasn´t good. My brother departed at the same time to hand out bread to family friends my father has baked. It is an old tradition. When we came back. Next we had a Christmas sauna. It is very important to be clean on Christmas Eve. After sauna, I was exhausted. By the way, me and Titus had a swim in a small but deep ditch filled with brown water and dead frogs. It was time for dinner after this.

We have had the same food on the Christmas table as long as I can remember. There are three courses. I don´t know the name in English. First we eat fish, then meat and finish with dessert. For older people the dinner is the most important thing on Christmas. For children the gifts are far more important. I am somewhere in between. At 8 o´clock my younger brother played Santa Clause. The present were handed out and he left and came back. We opened our gifts. I couldn´t come up with anything to wish for. My best gift was a small set of water colours and a mouse for my computer. I couldn´t come up with anything big so this was what I got. The late night included board games and tea drinking. Oh, I can´t be bothered to describe this well. Christmas is nice but not to describe.

25 is Christmas day. We eat something called "Lutfisk", which is we have once in a year. It is fish prepared in a strange and disgusting way. It´s very tasty though. Before the Lutfisk lunch we went for a walk in the woods. It was disappointing that there was no snow. I miss the snow. We walked to a nice place deep in the woods I never been to before. We walked back and ate. On 25 at 8 o´clock my older brother and his wife arrived. They had spent the Christmas Eve with her parents.

26 we just relaxed and continued eating on our ham. We played board games, which are more traditional than computer games and went for walks. The wind was hard and it was raining.

The next they some family friends visited us. I taught the youngest boy how to play chess. We was clever and fast to learn. Maybe around ten years old. 28.12 is my fathers birthday. He is now 58. We sang for him and gave him a present. A gift card for a very controversial piece of drama about the history of Finland. We had lunch. Then we jumped on the train. We are ecological. In Helsinki, Helsingfors in Swedish, we split up and went to shops. My brother bought a pair of drumsticks and I didn´t buy anything. At 18:45 we want to the Cinema. We watched Du levande directed by Roy Andersson. It was excellent and I recommend you to check it. After the film we hurried to the train, got back and jammed together, my brother and I. It was awesome and we played good music.

Today is 29.12 and it is raining. The weather has been much worse than in Glasgow. It is darker and there is more rain. And it could be so beautiful it it would be colder. Then all the rain would be snow and everything would be white.

It is very nice to be at home and meet the family. However I want to return to Glasgow as well. I feel eager to study, travel and meet new people. I also feel recovered Jenni. I met her for the last time, in terms of being allies, in Åbo (fin. Turku)harbour. It is always sad when things end. However, all the eating has been a perfect way to distract eventual wandering thoughts. I feel recharged and happy. Chrismtas is great.

Before leaving Glasgow, a lot of things happened. Unfortunately I have forgot what they were. I went to the 12 hours Christmas party and enjoyed some lovely Te. It was sad to leave my flatmates behind. Luckily we will reunite again and mess up flat G. At that time I´ll not miss them as much.

I had a walk around the university the day before I left Glasgow. It was serious and I did some very fruitful thinking. If you want to know what I thought you´ll have to ask me. I also managed to buy some Scotland inspired gifts to my family. Tea to my parents, sweets to my brother and crisps to my younger brother. I escaped cheaply.

For New Years Eve I´ll travel 500 km north to the town where I studied from autumn 2005 to spring 2007. I will meet lawyer friends and have time to reflect over how fast everything goes and how fun Scotland is. Life is serious.

Merry C and Happy N E